buylotrogold

Whats your take on the evolution of consciousness? Do you mean consciousness as in a body responding to situations in the environment or the internal presentations (visual images, etc

Eliminativism maintains that the common-sense understanding of the mind is mistaken, and that the neurosciences will one day reveal that the mental states that are talked about in every day discourse, using words such as intend , believe , desire , and love , do not refer to anything real. The Churchland stuff is again much ado over little: The right of a particular practice or discipline to describe what it researches with its own brand of interpretative conceptions and terminology. Dennett's claim, OTH, potentially borders on Kookville if he truly believes he is navigating around the countryside without the aid of visual, auditory, and tactile mappings composed of elements like colors, low and high pitches, haptic sensations, etc. This everyday scheme of being presented with such experiences has served humans since their evolutionary dawn, and who could even smoothly function if they had to switch to the over-technical complexity of this or that neuroscientific account? _ Shame, shame <g. You know very well Dennett does not truly believe that. It is a caricature of his eliminatist position you   use as an Aunt Sally easily knocked down.

Shame, shame <g. You know very well Dennett does not truly believe that. It is a caricature of his eliminatist position you   use as an Aunt Sally easily knocked down. Note the if in that passage of mine. Just as the various interpretations and distortions of Kant have become potent agents to address in their own right, so the diverse simulations of Dennett. _

Shame, shame <g. You know very well Dennett does not truly believe that. It is a caricature of his eliminatist position you   use as an Aunt Sally easily knocked down. Note the if in that passage of mine. Just as the various interpretations and distortions of Kant have become potent agents to address in their own right, so the diverse simulations of Dennett. _ Unfortunately Kant is not able to correct interpretations and distortions. However, Dennett  clearly denies the antecedent of your conditional so I assumed you were using it to disparage his eliminatist stance. If by diverse simulations of Dennett you mean distortions of his position, I stand corrected  . Zinnic

Identity is not correlation. IT depends upon correlation to make the claim. Note that this is an epistemological point, not a logical one. You are right that we *generally* need to make some correlations before we can reasonable judge that A is B. For example we often spring to the fact that our spouses are two timing us by noticing stuff like the hot babe (who is going to get her teeth rearranged anytime soon) in the flat above is always home when one's spouse is missing otherwise unaccountably. But this talk of correlation is a bit vague. But yes, often we have to notice when some things occur at the same sort of time time as other things... that is a consequence of the logical fact about identity (stuff like one thing cannot be in two places at once etc etc...). But the argument, and this is a point that most people seem to miss, from the correlations to the identity always looks weak as a mere inductive argument. But then, in my view, all inductive arguments are weak. The strength of the identity argument does   not rest merely on these inductive instances but on the power of simple explanation, it being the best *theory* overall.

You are right that we *generally* need to make some correlations before we can reasonable judge that A is B. For example we often spring to the fact that our spouses are two timing us [...] You were off to a good start, then the '[...]' must happen.